But if anyone wishes to judge of the futility of trying to ‘place’ a bear by his colour, he should visit the drying-yard of our principal merchant in furs, here in Victoria. In that yard on a sunny day, when the bear skins are laid out to air, he will see skins of every shade between black, white, and red, all collected from a comparatively limited district, and all shading so gradually into one another, that you cannot yourself decide where the smoky grey of the true grizzly has changed into the reddish brown of the cinnamon, or where that has become dark enough to be considered a rather brownish black. As it is with the colour so it is with the shape of the beasts, and with the shape and colour of their claws. The typical grizzly should be higher at the shoulder, somewhat shorter in the back, and generally more massive than the black bear. He should be so high at the shoulder as to appear almost humpbacked, whilst his head should be heavy and massive, broad between the ears, short in proportion to its size as compared to the head of the black bear, sharp at the snout, and somewhat flat behind the eyes; the whole expression of the head being as unmistakably pugnacious and dangerous as the expression of the long shallow head of the black bear is weak and inoffensive. As most people are aware, naturalists rely for purposes of identification more upon the shape of a bear’s skull than upon any external characteristics, and for that reason I have inserted here an engraving from a photograph of two skulls placed side by side, the larger one being that of a medium-sized grizzly bitch (or sow) from Alaska, the other that of a very large black bear (male) from British Columbia. [Illustration: Black bear, Grizzly bear] As far as the general expression of the beast goes, it seems to me that that is no better guide than his colour, for even amongst grizzlies I have in one trip come across one specimen with a head as full of vice as a viper’s, and another as mild as a Chinese cook’s. It is true that the sexes differed; the mild face naturally belonging to the lady. As to the claws again, the typical Californian grizzly should have extremely long flat claws of a bony whiteness--claws obviously meant for digging and not for climbing; while the genuine black bear should have claws to climb and fish with, sharply curved, small and dark coloured.